all things said and done
by wreckageofstars
Summary: The galaxy doesn't fall; Anakin Skywalker does.
1. Chapter 1

_all things said and done_

The galaxy doesn't fall; Anakin Skywalker does.

i.

He woke to furious, savage incoherence, half-blind with pain, an enraged howl working its way out of his throat, betrayal stinging molten behind his eyes, but he didn't know why.

"None of that, now," Vokara Che said sharply, and something stung inconsequentially against his neck, flooded his veins with something cool and crawling, blasted the remnants of the already hazy past from the front of his mind. He shook at the onslaught of cold, strained against the material that held his limbs ( _only three, only three,_ a part of his mind gibbered, _where in the nine kriffing hells was his hand?_ ) to what felt like a medical cot, breaths coming too fast and too hard as air was pulled from his chest and shoved back in without his control, _what the kriff was on his face, shoved down his throat_ -

" _Don't try to breathe_ , Skywalker," Master Che said, voice less than kind, cool fingers pressing down on his sweat-dampened forehead as she curtailed his aborted attempt at panicked flailing. "Let the machine do it for you." He let it, reluctantly, vision clearing of bright, flashing spots as oxygen made its way to his blood. The harsh lights of the operating centre in the Halls of Healing flooded his sight, Master Che's lekku dangling before his eyes, the periphery of his vision still a bright, garbled haze. The fingers of his flesh hand scrabbled against the cool sheets, the stump of his other arm aching in sympathy.

Everything hurt, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he somehow deserved it.

" _Mmph?_ " he tried through the breathing apparatus, hoping the general sentiment he was trying to convey (namely, ' _what in the nine hells is going on_?' with a side of ' _why am I chained to the cot like a kriffing war criminal_?') made it across without words. The Force ducked and slid out from his grasp like a bar of soap, feeling slippery and unwelcoming. He reached for it and hit only cold darkness, biting its way up his spine, coating the back of his mouth, and his heart pounded with confused terror, limbs ( _only three, only three_ ) jerking again in an attempt at panic. " _Mmmph_?" he repeated, breath stuttering against the forced flow of air that wasn't going nearly fast enough to convey the strength of his confusion.

"I can sense your disorder," Master Che said, voice still a tad too firm to be kind like he remembered, "but you're in no state to remember anything I tell you right now. Sleep, young Skywalker." Her fingers pressed once more into his forehead, the Force suggestion stronger than the chaos muddying his brain. His eyes slipped closed almost gratefully, smoke clogging the back of his throat, seeing red behind his eyelids.

Her voice was soft, a foreboding, accented rasp.

"Though I make no promises for better circumstances the next time you wake."

* * *

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the calmer, solemn lights of a room in the private ward. It was almost completely empty, the blinds drawn, the walls bare. The slightest hint of sun creeped out from under the window and threw a sliver of light on the wall across from him. Out of his reach.

He didn't feel calm, exactly, but his heart beat slowly and steadily, his thoughts muddy. He had the briefest, hazy flash of ruddy beard and blue eyes, of shaking, calloused fingers as they trailed gently down his face. _Impossible_ , though he was having trouble remembering why. He'd been drugged, he thought sluggishly, and heavily too, though the indignation that knowledge usually brought was slow to come.

His prosthetic arm had been replaced, thankfully, though he could tell already that the servos would need adjusting, that it lacked the fine motor control of its predecessor. Whatever it was that had been shoved down his throat was gone too, only a mask left, supplying air for his lungs to inhale as required. Or at least, he thought, as his chest stuttered painfully, as best as they were able.

"Hello?" he said, cringing into the cot at the quiet, mangled rasp of his voice, jerking unconsciously against his restraints as the sharp pain in his throat brought to life a sea of fire behind his eyes, the memory of smoke, charred and thick and _hot_ , filling his lungs. ' _Come back_!' his master yelled in the vestiges of his mind, eyes desperate, and the past was a blurred, sickening haze. But he had a better idea now of how exactly he had come to be here and his stomach roiled with the revelation.

"Oh no," he muttered, the Force broiling thick and black and unfamiliar with his deepening fear, but clumsy in his grasp. "Oh, _kriff_."

He could remember now, in bits and sluggish flashes, his dreams of Padmé, his ever-increasing unease, the refusal of the Council to grant him the access ( _the power, don't pretend like you didn't want it, don't pretend like you don't want it still_ ) he needed to save her, the churning mess of terror that had lately seemed permanently lodged under his ribcage, the Chancellor ( _his friend, his mentor, only_ \- ), pale under the gloomy lighting of the opera as he offered him a way to stop death -

\- it figured that the only person in his mess of a life that he'd felt he could confide in was actually a _Sith Lord_. The revelation hadn't come pleasantly. There'd been – a conflict.

A long, drawn out conflict within himself that had ended with the bitter, ashy taste of betrayal in his mouth, the feeling of walls pressing in on all sides. He couldn't remember leaving the Temple, wasn't sure if he'd stopped to see Padmé on the way, the sequence of events blending together in a nauseous haze of red that only ended with the sickening thump of the Chancellor's head as it hit the ground and rolled to a stop at his feet.

He'd never even seen it coming, Anakin thought hazily, stomach churning, putting up a token fight against the cuffs that trapped his hands and feet to the cot. Hadn't even conceived of the thought that his greatest creation ( _because that was what he was, to Palpatine, to the Jedi, nothing more than a tool, something to be twisted and melded into shape and cast aside the moment he stepped out of line_ ) might in turn betray him. He'd been in the middle of a sentence when Anakin had rid him of his head, the words _temple, separatists, mustafar_ penetrating his thoughts through a fog of terrified confusion – he'd left, almost immediately after that, recalled the way his hand had traced the cool metal of the Senate hallways, the disorientating shake and rattle of the ship he'd stolen, fingers plugging in Mustafar's coordinates as if in a dream.

He hadn't touched the Temple, wouldn't do anything that monster had wanted him to do, bile still coating the inside of his throat as he remembered the once comforting touch of the old man's hand on his shoulder ( _you were not a child, not a confidant, not a son, you were nothing more than his_ property), but the Separatists still had to go, of course. He had ended the Sith; now he would end the war. It was his destiny. It had been – logical, it had been the rational thing to do, he had wanted the galaxy _safe_ , safe for Padmé, safe for his child, but he couldn't fit the pieces together, couldn't remember what had happened next. Saw only his master's face, pained, begging, lightsaber flashing blue in the searing, red heat of the volcano, had only the distinct impression that he had crossed some invisible line from which there was no return.

 _Now you've done it, Skywalker_ , he thought distantly, breaths still coming in odd, rasping gasps. _But what exactly have you done?_

"You're awake," a cool voice said, interrupting his increasingly panicked rumination, accompanying the familiar rush of air as the door to the room slid open. Master Che approached gracefully, Master Windu a tall, silent shadow at her heel and Anakin did his best not to look like he wanted nothing more than to sink into the cot and disappear from sight. "Do you remember?"

"Uh," he rasped eloquently, hoping it managed to get across the extent to which he both did and did not understand what exactly had happened. "I -" He paused to hack painfully into the unfortunately lumpy pillow he'd been provided with, eyes watering, frustration at their reticence growing. "I wouldn't mind – being filled in on a few details."

They both ignored him, Master Che moving closer to shine a light in his eyes, press her hands to his throat and chest, fingers cool even through the thin tunic he'd been provided.

"Well," Master Windu said, as she finished her examination. "Is he fit to go before the Council?"

 _What?_

Anakin's breath caught in his throat, was expelled from his lips through another fit of pained hacking, blood running cold even through the drug-induced haze that he assumed was preventing what Obi-Wan sometimes referred to as a patented Skywalker Meltdown.

"Please," he managed, throat stinging, "I don't -" _understand what's going on, I don't know what's happening -_

"Normally, I wouldn't advise it," Master Che said, frowning. "But under the circumstances -"

Master Windu looked at him coldly. To Master Che, he said, "I'm sure you can agree that it is a pressing issue."

She pursed her lips and avoided Anakin's gaze. "Yes," she said.

"Would someone please tell me what is going on?" Anakin rasped, more politely than he wanted to. "I don't – remember how I got here, I don't remember hardly anything after -" He broke off, wheezing. Swallowed harshly, jaw tense. "Where's Obi-Wan?" _Where is my wife_?

Master Windu met his wild gaze with a face like stone, and just as comforting. "He's not here, Skywalker. You won't be able to rely on him to dig you out of your mess this time."

"Mess?" Anakin shot back, indignation rising through the twist of worry for his absent master, though a shadow of doubt curdled his stomach. _Monster_ , it whispered. "I – I found and dispatched the Sith Lord. I got rid of the Separatist leaders!" Actually, he had a faint, ill-defined memory of dismembering them and tossing them over into Mustafar's active lava field, which, to be fair, probably wasn't exactly up to the merciful standards of the Jedi Code. But they were at _war_. Or at least they had been, before he'd _ended it_.

And he wasn't so naive as to think that Mace Windu, vaapad master, had never beheaded an enemy in a fit of pique.

"You did," Windu said, pressing forward until he towered over the cot, voice sharp and slowly enunciated, speaking as he might to something both dull and peeled off of the heel of his boot, "at which point you began to make designations to _replace said Sith Lord as our Head of State_."

 _Oh no_.

Anakin sunk back into the cot, heart sinking.

"But," he whispered after a moment, gut churning, "that's _insane_."

"Yes," Master Windu said pointedly.

"But I don't remember any of it," Anakin protested, struggling weakly against the restraints. Nausea threatened to climb up his throat, heart pounding. _Monster_. "And even if it did happen like you said, I clearly didn't succeed!"

"No," Master Che stepped in. "Your former master managed to break through before you went forward with anything."

A flash of red behind his eyes, burning smoke filling his lungs, flames licking at his limbs, Obi-Wan's voice echoing desperately in his ears -

"Did -" he choked, not quite wanting to believe it, breath wheezing in his chest as incontrovertible evidence, " - _did he toss me into a lava bed_?"

"It's my understanding," Master Che said, poking delicately at the thin, stinging synthflesh that he could now feel coating the right side of his face, "that your fall into the lava was unintentional on both your parts." She looked at him now with what might have been the barest hint of sympathy, though he wasn't sure it was for him. "Your master was quite torn up about it. The respiratory tract is delicate and difficult to repair, especially from burn damage."

" _Kriffing hells_ ," Anakin wheezed, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Precisely," Master Windu said stonily. "You fell, Skywalker. In consideration of that and the other facts that have come to light since," he paused ominously, the kriffing bastard, "the Council would very much like to speak with you."

Anakin would have personally given his remaining arm for the privilege then of _not_ speaking to the Council -

\- but something in the gleam of Master Windu's eye told him that wasn't going to be an option. The Force sang a portent, the future hanging precariously before him, shadowed and murky and cold. The dark side, he found, biting his tongue, wasn't much use when you wanted nothing more than to be _rid of it._

(Or at least when you were trying to trick yourself into thinking that you wanted nothing more than to be rid of it.)

What he wanted, more than anything, what he would have given anything for, in that moment, was to be with his wife, to make sure she was alright, to make sure his dreams hadn't come to fruition. To make sure that he hadn't made a mistake in killing what he'd thought might be her only hope.

(In the moment before his blade had come swinging through Palpatine's neck, he'd thought for what felt like an eternity about what she would have wanted. Her survival was more important than anything else, more important than the galaxy at large, if he was honest with himself, but he had faith in his wife, had faith in her beliefs. She would have wanted him to do what was _right._

Sometimes figuring out what exactly was right was more difficult than he liked to admit.)

Anakin gritted his teeth and swallowed back the sluggish rush of fear pulsing through his veins, tried again to sink further into the firm mattress of the cot.

"If I do," he ventured, "will you let me see my wife?"


	2. Chapter 2

ii.

"Asleep for a long time, you have been." Yoda's ancient, gravelly voice tumbled into his ears, the tone oddly conversational, where Anakin stood stock still, arms restrained in front of him, the hairs on the back of his neck raised on end. He'd been brought from his room on a hoverchair not long after he'd awoken, the corridors strangely deserted, air still fixed under his nose, but the apparatus had been removed before he'd been sent into the Council Chamber. He stood now before the Council itself, Master Yoda at his customary place in the centre, knees locked to keep from collapsing. Breath hissed reluctantly in through his stinging nose. The high ceiling loomed, the blinds drawn, throwing the room and its inhabitants (but not Obi-Wan, he wasn't here, _he wasn't here_ ) into murky grey. Vokara Che stood unmoving behind him, along with the two Temple guards who'd escorted him from the Halls of Healing. Plainly, there was no getting out of this. "Confused, you are."

Anakin swallowed painfully, hands clenched in front of him, white knuckles visible for all of them to see. "Yes, master," he rasped, unsure of what else to say, the loud thrum of _Padmé Obi-Wan Padmé Obi-Wan where are they what_ _ **happened**_ that had taken precedence ever since he'd been woken up making it hard to think clearly, drowning out the other concerns he might presume to have. He'd tried to reach out earlier, tried to extend his senses through the Force and into Coruscant, searching for them, but he'd come up empty. He was too tired, too weakened. They hadn't given him an exact count (hadn't given him an exact _anything_ ), but he knew he'd been insensible in the Halls of Healing for the better part of two weeks since whatever had happened – had happened.

"Know, do you, why you are here?"

"No," Anakin said, frustration seeping through, though the voice of reason in the back of his head that sounded a bit like Obi-Wan, so often purposefully silenced, urged caution. He reigned it in, painstakingly, unable to relax his hands entirely. "I mean, I have – some idea, but I don't _remember_ , Master." He looked up tentatively. Noted again the conspicuous absence of quite a few members of the Council. There wasn't a friendly face to be found – and more importantly, no sign of his master. He couldn't reach him through their bond, either, the connection either barred somehow or made impossible through distance.

 _Why isn't he here? Wouldn't he – wouldn't he try to be here?_

Unless he'd finally had enough of him, Anakin thought with a grim sort of panic, swallowing harshly again. But maybe that wasn't giving his master enough credit – he'd seemed different lately. More open, less demanding. The back of his mind was still filled with _red_ and _pain_ and not much else, but what little he could remember of Obi-Wan was desperate and sad. Not angry, or hurtful, or cruel, though he had the feeling he might have deserved it.

He wondered if the Council had somehow done away with him, delayed him, prevented him from attending. An irrational thought. Paranoid, like they seemed to think he was. But persistent. He dragged his thoughts away from his master and Padmé with difficulty, tried to focus on the slivers of light just barely visible under the window blinds, the not-so-patiently waiting masters in front of him. "I – I'm still in the Temple," he observed finally, feeling the weight of many gazes fall on him. "Are you -" he swallowed, mind doing him the courtesy of flashing back to Ahsoka's trial, the way her eyes had widened in despair as the verdict was brought down," - are you going to turn me over to the Republic?"

He had just technically murdered their Head of State, though in light of all that Palpatine had turned out to be, he had to assume that the man ( _the monster_ ) had been discredited enough to excuse his death.

(He'd murdered their Sith Lord and saved them all and somehow he'd still ended up hauled before the Jedi Council in chains, his ability unrecognized, their whipping boy once more, _no, stop it, that's not right_ \- )

"Republic!" Yoda said, huffing. His eyes met Anakin's own, piercingly. "Left quite a mess for the Republic to clean up, you did. Busy, they are." He paused. "An internal matter, this is."

Anakin closed his eyes queasily. _Internal matter. Great._

"If not know," Yoda continued, "then feel, can you? The reason you are here before us."

"Feel?" Anakin asked, fists clenching and unclenching nervously, fear bubbling in his chest, chewing at his heart like it always did, seeking outlet as frustration, as rage. He didn't want to just stand around on shaky legs while the Council talked in circles around him – he'd had enough of that for a lifetime. "I -"

"Reach into the Force," the Grand Master ordered, still looking at him. His face was unreadable. "What does it tell you?"

 _That I'm knee deep in poodoo_ , he didn't say, but stretched out regardless, gut churning. It felt the same as it had since he'd first woken, dodging his grasp, slick like oil. A particular burning kind of cold, seeping under his bones, as though the warmth was just out of reach. It broiled under his careful exploration, unfamiliar and volatile.

Only it wasn't, exactly. His heart thundered in his ears, a memory of the Tusken camp flashing to the front of his mind, the shift of sand under his feet, the incandescent rage that had flowed bitingly cold through his veins -

The Council members, faces shadowed, shifted uncomfortably. An unsettled mutter filled the room.

"What?" Anakin asked, feeling himself pale. "I don't -"

"The dark side, that is," Yoda said, fixing him with a gaze that was both firm and almost apologetic. "Touched it, you have. Forever taint you now, it will."

" _No_ ," he protested fruitlessly, "no, I didn't -" _mean to, I didn't want to, it just_ -

The walls of the room seemed to grow smaller, pressing in from all sides, the room darkening. His breaths echoed harshly in his ears.

"There must be some mistake," he said, chest rattling, blood running like ice in his veins. " _I didn't turn_. He – the Chancellor, he wanted me to be his apprentice and I refused, I said no, I – I killed him! I ended the war!"

 _Isn't that what you wanted?_

Yoda considered him, one ear twitching. His face was still perfectly calm.

"Gratitude, do you think we should feel?" he probed. "Indebted to you, are we, young Skywalker?"

Anakin flinched, pressing back until he ran into Master Che, still and solid as stone behind him. _No, of course not_ , a part of him insisted, while the roiling darkness nestled under his heart beat a furious rebuttal. _Of course you are_ , it thrummed. _I have saved you from yourselves._ He didn't know what to say. It was a trick. It had to be.

It was always a trick.

"I don't understand," he said instead of answering, breaths still coming too fast, too harsh. "I – alright, so it would have been better to bring him before the Council to be tried, but he was dangerous, and I -"

He stopped. _Don't embellish the truth, Anakin,_ the Obi-Wan in his head chided.

" - I don't think I went there intending to kill him," he admitted, eyes focusing on the slivers of sunlight across the room. "It was sudden. If I'd thought about it for longer than a second, I'm sure I'd be dead too." He looked to Master Yoda again, searchingly. "He wanted me to join him. He'd been – _waiting for me_. You can't understand. To realize that – that for all these years he'd been –"

He broke off, shuddering, phantom hands squeezing his shoulder in a mockery of affection, feeling used and unclean.

"So killed him, you did," Master Yoda said, slowly. "Good for the galaxy, perhaps it was. But not so good for you. Broken the Code, you have. _Fallen_ , you have."

A cold, grim silence fell.

"I don't understand," Anakin said slowly, feeling like a faulty holo-record, doomed to repeat itself. "Then. Is...is this a trial?" Dread crept up his spine, a gradual, icy panic. It was true that he could feel the dark side, feel its slimy coldness even now, begging to be wielded, but -

He didn't _feel_ like a Sith. The dark side saturated everything at the moment, the Force slippery in his grasp, but he could still _see_ the light, could almost, almost reach it – wanted _desperately_ to reach it. Wouldn't a true Sith decry the touch of the light? Profess his dark, homicidal urges freely, have broken free from his bonds and slaughtered them all by now? Anakin didn't exactly like the Jedi Council (with the obvious, singular exception), had been wary of them since he was a child, chafed under their constant rejection, but he didn't want to murder them. Right now, he didn't want to murder anything. He was just – scared. And worried. And closer to collapsing into a shaky-limbed heap on the floor than he would have liked.

"No," Master Windu answered, a stone-like silhouette against the meagre grey light. "Your fate was decided long before we sent for you. Your violations of the Jedi Code alone would be grounds for severe consequences." His upper lip curled, ever so slightly. Thinly veiled disgust rippled through the Force, and some long scabbed-over pain. "Your surrender to the dark side has made matters more complex. If not for your - _weakness_ , we would not be in this situation."

"Situation?"

"A Jedi, you are not," Master Yoda said firmly, as Anakin's breath caught raggedly in his throat at the bluntly stated proclamation, chest aching. "Disgraced this Order, you have. But complicated, things have become."

"You acted outside of the law," Master Windu continued, "and left the Senate in chaos. They're scrambling for a convenient moment you fall out from under our jurisdiction, you'll be at the mercy of the Republic."

 _The mercy of the Republic_. What a joke, he thought bitterly, Ahsoka's eyes flashing blue in the back of his mind. Like that sort of thing had ever mattered to them before. They were cutting him off, disassociating themselves from him to avoid further censure, avoid proving the accusations of the Senate right.

"So," Anakin rasped, the Council chambers wavering at the periphery of his vision, "you are handing me over to them."

"No," Yoda said. "Expelled from the Order you will be, but under our jurisdiction you will remain. A provision of our cooperation with the Senate, this is." He gave a solemn nod to Master Che behind him, the lines on his face pronounced and deep.

 _Not good_ , something whispered in the back of his head.

"What provision?" Anakin gasped as she stepped forward, undoing his restraints and grasping him gently but firmly around the elbow of his flesh arm. He grit his teeth and forced himself not to flinch away, feeling the tension in the room increase like a pressure valve. The Force, whether it was the dark side or not, rippled a warning, sliding greasily across his skin. _Run_ , it said.

 _If I run_ , he shot back irrationally, heart twisting, _I might never see them again, I'd only be hunted down, a monster, a killer, not a husband or a father or a friend._ "I don't -"

"A liability, you are," Yoda said quietly, voice carrying in the surrounding silence. "Contained, you must be. But not imprisoned. Our agreement with the Senate, this was."

No. _No_.

"Please," Anakin said raggedly, breath coming in strangled, desperate heaves, Force rippling around him, hand itching for his saber, "please, you don't have to do anything, I won't use it, _I won't_ ," but it was no use and Master Che had grasped his forearm, was encircling his wrist grimly with something he'd only seen once, in a controversial book he'd found in Qui-Gon's study, the Temple Guards converging behind him, it was too late to run, too late to stop this, "I just want my family, I just want to be safe, you don't," and it was like something out of every padawan's worst nightmare, a grim reminder of the dark past of the Jedi, something ancient and barbaric, " _you don't have to do this!_ "

With an innocuous click, the slender-looking bracelet snapped together, pushed two thin poles through the delicate bones of his wrist and drove him to his knees with a pained shout, sucked the colour and life from the world in less than an instant. In the periphery of his blurry vision, several masters leaned forward with interest.

He reached in vain for the Force, for the barest hint, the slightest touch, and found only emptiness. A hollow, dry absence. His heart beat dully in his chest. Something wet and cold slid down his cheek.

"This device dampens your connection to the Force," Master Che explained firmly, face schooled into something remarkably dispassionate, though the tips of her lekku were twitching in discomfort. "Any attempt to remove it," she hesitated, frowning as what little blood there had been in Anakin's face fled completely, "or to leave Coruscant," she continued, as black spots gathered in the periphery of his vision, bile rising sour in his throat, phantom suns burning the back of his neck, "will cause it to detonate."

It was lucky, he thought, folded over on the ground as he threw up on the chamber floor, that he hadn't had anything solid to eat in what apparently had been weeks. It was more of a dry heave, really, foul-tasting spit congealing in his mouth, stomach cramping. He closed his eyes, limbs trembling, long-ago fury rising in his throat, stinging behind his eyes when it found no outlet through the Force.

The two Temple guards hauled him to his feet roughly, drew his hands behind his back. Master Windu stood, face unreadable. The Force told him nothing, showed him nothing, like a comm signal that was out of range -

"My master," Anakin rasped, legs shaking underneath him, the world dull and grey and empty like it had never been before, "can I – _please_ –"

"Obi-Wan Kenobi is no longer a Master. He has been removed from this Council," Master Tiin told him with a face like stone. "He's been sent to lead the war-relief efforts in former Separatist territory."

The guards' hands tightened around his arms as he buckled under this new information. Guilt broiled in his gut, sucked the air from the room.

"But," he protested, "he didn't -"

"A shame, really," Master Tiin continued over him. "Kenobi could have been a magnificent Jedi, if it hadn't been for you. His actions since you both returned have gone on record – it's highly unlikely he'll ever regain his seat again with that sort of black mark."

Master Koon looked down at him from his seat. "When he returns," he said, more quietly than his counterpart, "it might be better, for his sake, if you don't attempt to contact him."

" _This wasn't his fault_ ," Anakin hissed, twisting in the Temple guards' grasp, heart pounding at the thought of never seeing him again, never touching, never sparring, _he couldn't_ \- "He had no idea what I was going to do, had no idea about Padmé, had no idea about _anything_ , you can't -"

"Know more than you think, Obi-Wan did," Yoda interrupted, voice firm, almost pained. Without the Force, the unwavering, peaceful strength he projected was undetectable. He seemed less omnipotent and more frail. "Allow more than you know, he did. Complicit, he is. _Attached_."

Attached. The Jedi Order's favourite dirty word. Anakin closed his eyes, air wheezing in his chest, frustration and fear tangling in the back of his throat. He hadn't wanted this. For himself, but especially not for his master.

"Anakin Skywalker," Master Windu said, voice echoing in the sudden silence, "you are hereby expelled from the Jedi Order." There was a pause as he allowed the proclamation to set in, the words wrapping themselves around Anakin's throat and squeezing. A gradual, driving panic was settling into him, fighting its way through the hollow, cottony absence that now filled his head. "The guards and Master Che will take you to clear your quarters. You're free to live your life however you see fit now, Skywalker." His eyes narrowed. "But be warned – we will be watching. Once you've become settled somewhere, a representative from the Temple will be around to check in with you periodically. To satisfy our agreement with the Senate."

 _Your continued freedom is not guaranteed_. That's what he was saying. And even the so-called freedom he'd been given wasn't freedom in a real sense. The detonator in his wrist was proof enough of that, no different, no better than the slave chip he'd been fitted with as a child. Something old and furious burned in his gut, a hollow, flickering flame, weak without the Force to channel it. He was nothing, now. Not a Jedi, not a Sith, not the Chosen One – just Anakin Skywalker. Traitor, husband, father.

Trapped.

"Not so tall, you are, without the Force," Yoda observed quietly, looking suddenly very old and very frail. Tired. There was a pause as he considered Anakin from his seat, the air between them heavy and thick. The mask slipped ever so slightly, and the look he gave Anakin was something that was not quite pity.

"To his wife, take him," he told the Temple guards as they hauled him out of the chamber, and those muddy brown eyes, piercing and ancient, were the last he saw of the Grand Master of the Order for a very long time.

* * *

Anakin didn't have much in the way of material belongings – no Jedi did, and so the clearing out of his quarters took very little time at all. He left the Temple in a borrowed tunic, river stone weighing down his pocket, the folded blanket from his bed that he'd inherited from Obi-Wan and a toolkit he'd bought with his first GAR stipend tucked under his arm, the undisguised stares from the few Jedi he'd run into in the corridors painting his back.

("That R2 unit is property of the GAR," one of the Temple guards had told him when he'd asked about Artoo, recharging in his quarters, shifting uncomfortably when Anakin had then sunk down to his knees to pat the little droid on his domed head.

"Bye, buddy," he'd choked out, getting a sad-sounding whistle in return. "I'll -" _I'll be back soon_.

He had swallowed, fingers running over the ridges of the droid's forward sensors. There was no point in lying to Artoo. It would only be cruel. "Don't let them touch your programming," he'd whispered, against the increasingly distressed-sounding beeping, the confused mess of shrill, curse-laden binary. " _Be good_." )

Now he was being bundled into a Temple air speeder, Master Che's solid gaze at his back.

"Your respiratory system has been irreparably damaged," she had told him on the platform, face grim. "Avoid strenuous activity, and accept the limits of what you can and cannot do now. I would have liked to have done more," she had admitted. "But my hands are tied. From now on you'll have to deal with the Republic's medical services, should you require further assistance." Her lips had thinned, pressed together into an expression he couldn't recognize. "May the Force be with you, Skywalker."

He had turned away, jaw clenched. The phrase felt more like a mockery now than a goodbye.

The world was numb to him now, colourless, lifeless. As the speeder moved into traffic, he closed his eyes as Coruscant failed to rush to the forefront of his mind, heaving, swirling with existence. It was loud and crowded and impossibly dull. His head pounded with the empty space. The future loomed impossibly, and for once he had no insight, no sense whatsoever of what it might hold.

"I thought you were taking me to my wife," he said as the driver of the speeder made a sharp left when she should have turned right. She looked like an initiate, old enough to drive, but barely. The Jedi often employed Force-sensitives not strong enough in the Force to be Jedi. "This isn't the way to where she lives."

The driver turned back to him briefly, young face pulling into a frown.

"I am taking you to your wife," she said, even as something that was not the Force caused his heart to drop into his stomach, trepidation raising the hair on the back of his neck. The driver's gaze turned sympathetic. "Haven't you heard? Padmé Amidala's been in a coma for weeks. We're headed to Grand Republic Medical."

* * *

Thanks so much for reading! More on the way. Cross posted to ao3.


	3. Chapter 3

iii.

He'd never been good at platitudes. He valued _kindness_ –

(in some other place and some other time, this was something they would always, always forget – that once, Anakin Skywalker, traitor to all those he loved, a nightmare fuelled by hate and loss, the murderous tool of a despot – had been kind)

– but lying to someone about their circumstances wasn't kindness. It was falsehood. And falsehoods were cruel. A lie was no way to show someone that you cared.

But sometimes the cold, hard truth was too harsh. He wasn't good at that, though – softening the edges of the truth, making things _okay_. Anakin Skywalker, for all his good intentions, was at heart a catastrophizer. When bad things happened, he panicked. Quietly and alone. Sometimes not-so-quietly. He didn't stick around and try to deal with them, try to work through them – he didn't know _how_.

But he remembered, once, after some early battle gone horrifically wrong (and it was horrible, really, but there had been so many battles and so many that had gone so wrong that he couldn't remember its name, couldn't even remember the planet they had been on), looking for his padawan in the bowels of the Resolute, war-grief, war-rage, war-hurt crackling in the back of his mind. It hadn't been his, though it easily could have been.

(He didn't remember the number of men they had lost, either – knew only that it had been too many, that it was _always_ too many, if it was one man lost or a hundred)

He'd found her, eventually, huddled behind the engine, face pale and grim. Sunk down beside her after a long, muted silence, the heat from the wall warming his back, the engine making the air hot and thick and cottony. Dry. Like if Tatooine's midday had been dark and tinged with red. He hadn't said anything. He wouldn't pass judgement, not when the battle was no longer and people's lives no longer depended on their ability to stay in the moment. He was a Jedi, but he was not the Jedi. And Ahsoka was a Jedi too, but she was also a child in a war zone, a child leading battalions of soldiers. Into battle. To their deaths.

"I _wish_ -" she'd said, voice cracking, leaning into him just slightly because she hadn't learned yet that he would only disappoint her.

He hadn't learned yet, either.

"I know, Snips," he'd said, bowing his head, feeling guilt of his own climb up his throat, leaving the anger behind to simmer in his chest. The rush he felt in the heat of battle so often made it difficult to remember the horror that was the aftermath. The hopelessness. The helplessness. Even when they won, they could only lose. "But -"

He'd paused, trying to untangle the words from his memory. He wasn't any good at platitudes – but if anyone he knew deserved the attempt, it was Ahsoka. And so he'd dredged up something he remembered Obi-Wan telling him once, after some disastrous mission. He didn't remember the details ( _he didn't want to remember the details_ ) but the journey home had stuck with him, if only because his master had placed a cool and comforting hand on the back of his neck, like Obi-Wan back then had only so rarely done, and said -

"All things said and done, Ahsoka. The past is the past." Like a mantra. Like if you said it enough it might actually mean something. "But the future remains."

"I don't see how that's a comfort," she'd replied, still hunched painfully in on herself.

He'd agreed, at least on some level. But the saying was Obi-Wan Kenobi wisdom at its finest, something unpleasantly straightforward that, upon closer inspection, was in fact a legitimate consolation despite all indications to the contrary.

"It means that you shouldn't dwell on what could have been. The good or the bad. That the future is still there, and the future that's still important. That when things go wrong, you have a chance to make them right." He remembered that hesitance still, that early gap that they'd worked to bridge. He'd been afraid, back then – not of Ahsoka (never, not even when everyone else had thought the worst), but for her, under his tutelage. He hadn't thought he was capable of being a teacher. Wondered still if he'd done something wrong, something to lead her astray, to make her want to walk away.

(Even worse, wondered if he'd done something right and she'd walked away from him anyway.)

He'd taken her smaller hand, clenched into a fist on the smooth metal floor, into his own. "It means you get to keep moving forward, even when things seem awful. It means you always have a choice." He hadn't believed it really, back then, but he'd desperately wanted to. Wanted her to believe it, too.

 _Say it again, Chosen One. Like a mantra. Like if you say it enough it might actually means something._

"It means you always have a choice."

* * *

It wasn't Ahsoka's hand he held now but his own wife's, pale and small, manicured nails bloodless, pulse slow and steady. He kept expecting her fingers to curve gently around his own, the way they always did. The way they were supposed to.

They didn't.

He bit fiercely at his own lip, fighting to keep his grip on Padmé's hand gentle, nose prickling with unshed tears, guilt and grief fighting their way up his throat. For the first time in their all-too-short lives they were free to be together, and still fate had conspired to keep them apart.

The Force was an ugly, sucking vacuum at his centre. Empty and aching and useless and _absent_. But the doctors at Grand Republic Medical were no Jedi, and they didn't know he was without the Force. They knew only that the Hero With No Fear had killed their corrupt head of state and emerged weeks later with a secret wife and a terrifying scowl. Earlier, before they'd let him in to see her, he'd felt that familiar urge at the back of his head, fear coiled in his stomach, hand itching for a throat, for someone to fix this, for someone to _punish_ -

In the end he hadn't strangled anybody, had fallen into that sucking vacuum and emerged with a nosebleed and a blinding pain behind his right eye, fear still souring his throat. It dulled the equally sickening jolt of satisfaction he got from the terror in their eyes. It wouldn't last.

But they'd let him in to see his wife.

His wife. He could say that now. Say it out loud, say it in front of people. He wasn't sure how it had gotten out, had half a mind to find out had done it and -

He caught a glimpse of the almost unnoticeable blood splattered on the hem of his borrowed tunic, head pounding. It was hard to be angry, without the Force as a well to draw on. It was hard to be scared. In the days, the weeks before he'd killed the Chancellor, he'd lived off of that anger, that fear – used it to keep himself awake, to keep himself from dreaming. Now it felt more like that fear was living off of him, sucking his breath from his lungs, his blood from his veins. Maybe it always had been and he'd never noticed before now.

In any case, in some way he was almost relieved. It was all they'd ever wanted – not to have to hide their love for one another. To be rid of their secrets, to cast off their shadows. Even if the revelation had come too late and at too high a cost.

A hesitant voice interrupted his ruminating. "Um, Master J – uh, that is, General, sir -"

He turned from where he stood at Padmé's bedside, watery eyes chancing upon what looked like a nurse or an orderly at the doorway of the private room, uniform white and crisp and plain. Someone who'd drawn the short stick, he thought with a grim sort of humour, taking in the man's deliberate swallow, the slight tremble of his hands. His accent was pure Coruscant, smooth and cultured and ever so slightly afraid.

"I'm not a Jedi or a General anymore," Anakin said, still growing accustomed to the new rasp of his voice. To speak louder than a whisper took unimaginable effort. "It doesn't matter what you call me."

"Sir," the nurse settled on, forehead crinkled, dark eyes curious. "They say – they say that Senator Amidala is your wife."

He still hadn't let go of her hand. "She is."

 _Jedi don't have wives_ , the nurse didn't say. He swallowed again. "Then – then are you also the father?"

He had to close his eyes against this onslaught, heart clenching, throat closing in denial, _that's wonderful_ , and he'd spun her around in the shadows of the Senate, happiness lodged in his throat like some wild thing, like some impossible gift, like something that couldn't be real –

" _Yes_ ," and the words were dragged out of his throat, their dream, their future, dead at his feet. Sourness coated the inside of his mouth. He'd made a choice. He'd saved the galaxy but he hadn't saved her. He hadn't saved their child.

(All things said and done, but there was some part of him that begged for the chance to go back and change his mind, to damn the galaxy and save her life, lose himself to keep her from death, to keep from being alone, he would have done it, _he would do it still_ – )

"Sir? Would you like to see them?"

His heart stuttered. Mouth dry, head pounding. Like a dream.

"What?" he croaked, feeling the blood leave his face. "The baby – the baby's alive?"

The nurse stepped forward, arm out, alarmed. "Yes, of course. Well, it's – it's twins, actually, but," the alarm twisted into mild outrage. "Has no one told you this? How long have you been here?" He strode forward, fear forgotten, grasping Anakin gently around the elbow, ignoring the full-body flinch that ensued. Padmé's hand was disentangled from his own, placed carefully back alongside her. "Come with me," the nurse said hotly. "Senator Amidala isn't going anywhere. She's being well-looked after."

He was led (he refused to admit that it was more of an insistent march) in a daze out of Padmé's private room, down the hall and a turbo-lift to another wing, kept separate from the rest of the hospital. Smaller, warmer, cozier. To his – his children.

 _Impossible_.

But he was looking down into a cot, a tiny, red face staring placidly back at him with her mother's eyes and he felt something wet slide down his cheek.

"How can this be?" he whispered, reaching a hand down wonderingly, a tiny, tiny hand stretching up in kind to meet it, wrapping around his finger. Another baby rested in another cot on the other side, eyes closed in peaceful sleep.

The nurse – now that Anakin cared to look he could see that the name tag read Kess – moved closer, face still set in a mildly disapproving frown. "No one's told you anything," he said in a wondering tone of his own. "The night you killed the Chancellor, Senator Amidala was found in her apartment by a friend and brought here. We couldn't find a physical reason for her condition. She – she complained of the cold."

Anakin felt a chill wrap around his own heart. _No_.

"We managed to deliver the twins before she slipped into sleep. She named them."

"Luke and Leia," Anakin rasped, Leia's hand still wrapped around his finger, the dark side's final gift hanging over his family like a spectre. "We – we weren't sure if the baby would be a boy or a girl. We came up with names for both." He swallowed painfully. They'd wanted it to be a surprise. "I guess we were both right."

Nurse Kess looked away. "I'm sorry," he said. "She's – she's in a vegetative state, but she's not dead. Not yet." He looked up, eyes searching, voice cautious. "My superiors told me not to tell you too much. But – but there's a Jedi that's been coming in every week. To do – to do things to her," his voice curdled with distaste, "with crystals." He paused. "And to look in on your children."

His blood ran cold.

" _They_ -" he rasped, breath wheezing, watched Kess' face tighten with alarm once again. A dark hand floated near his elbow. What had he expected? His life was not his own, his life had never been his own. It was too much to expect that his children be spared in kind. " _They know – about –_ "

"I don't care if you're a stone cold murderer of heads-of-state, I will make you sit down," Kess said warningly. "What did they do to you, anyway? I thought – I mean. Aren't you a Jedi?"

"Was a Jedi," Anakin spat, breaths still hissing uncomfortably in his chest. _Until about an hour ago_. "But they can't – _I won't let them take my children_ – "

The hand made contact with his elbow, the pressure oddly comforting, though it took his brain a minute to catch up to the fact that he wasn't being grabbed with intent to harm. "No one is taking your children," Kess said. "They – they tried, alright, but," the hand tightened before he could say anything, "we didn't let them take them. Everyone knows there's rules about that sort of thing. The Jedi can only take children with the consent of the parents." He looked at Anakin sadly. "Their mother wasn't fit to give it. And something tells me you might have something to say about it too."

Anakin closed his eyes, limbs shaking. "It's not that simple," he forced out. "I'm not – I'm not a Jedi anymore, but I'm still answerable to them. They could – "

Pressure at his elbow, firm, insistent. " _Both of the parents_ ," Kess said firmly. "They need the permission of both of the parents. They can't take them. Your children belong to no one."

Freeborn children. A rarity, in Mos Espa's slave quarters. A gift. Something to be celebrated. You had to – you had to offer something, to – to the ground, to the sky. He didn't remember, exactly, but his mother – his mother wouldn't care if he did it right, just that he remembered to do it at all, and she wasn't here to see and she wasn't here to know, but she would have been so glad –

"Can I," he asked, voice a hoarse croak. He felt dizzy. Lightheaded. "Would you get me a glass of water?"

And he was pushed rather insistently into a chair pulled up beside the cribs, but Kess dutifully left and returned with a glass full of water, not pure from the ground like it probably should have been, but good enough under the circumstances.

 _Thank you_ , he thought fiercely, the ancient words long lost from his tongue, but the sentiment was all that mattered. _Thank you, thank you, thank you_. And he lifted his arm above his head and poured the glass of water between the cribs, watched the water fall from sky to ground, where it pooled and gathered underneath, slipping away into the metal seams of the floor. Sucked up like it might have been by the merciless sand.

On Tatooine it was a cardinal sin to waste water. But an offering was never a waste. _That was the point_.

Nurse Kess stared at him in bewildered exasperation. "I thought you were going to drink that," he said. "I – you know what? Never mind." He stepped forward to pluck the empty glass from Anakin's hand, gaze softening. "You can take them with you, you know. When you're ready to leave. They're perfectly healthy." He raised an eyebrow. "And cute kids, to boot."

Anakin's heart leapt, spots flashing in front of his eyes, but he quickly sobered. "I have nowhere to take them," he admitted. "Nothing to give them."

"Well," Kess said, leading him reluctantly out of the ward, leaving his children in the supposedly capable hands of the neonatal droids, "maybe don't start with that when the Social Service droid comes to visit – "

"Social service?"

"You Jedi really don't get out much, do you," he said dryly. "They look after families. Or at least that's the idea. Sometimes the state and the family disagree on what constitutes a family. But the state is in chaos right now, and you say you're under the Jedi's jurisdiction anyhow, so maybe it doesn't matter." He paused, voice hesitant. "And if you go far enough underground, there's not much they can do anyway."

Anakin frowned. "Do people do that? Raise their children in the underworld?"

A grimace. "More often than you'd think. But not usually because they want to."

They rounded back on Padmé's room, the air crisper, cooler, brighter. There was a shelf of ostentatious floral arrangements that he hadn't noticed before, on the innermost wall. A more understated arrangement had been placed on the surface nearest her head. Naboo lilies. He could smell them from here.

Anakin stopped. Rasped. "Does her family know? On Naboo – "

"They're here," Kess said. "They've visited." He paused. "They wanted to know about the children, too. Offered to take them in."

Anakin breathed in shakily, the scent of the lilies lingering in his nose. He pictured his children – Padmé's children – under the care of her parents. Under the care of her sister and her children. They'd been – kind to him. They were good people. Loving.

He had no doubt that Luke and Leia would be loved by them. He could picture them, safe by the lakes on Naboo, surrounded by family. Loved, protected. They'd be treated well. Raised in comfort he wasn't sure he could provide.

They deserved that much, surely. They deserved better than him. They did.

But his children would be strong in the Force. He'd felt that much before they'd even been born, and even though he couldn't feel them now, why else would the Jedi Council be so determined to have them? The Naberries – they were kind and loving and good. But the Force was not with them. They wouldn't understand.

He knew, better than most, what it was like to be loved but misunderstood. To grow up thinking there was something wrong with you. To be different from the rest, for better or worse. He didn't want Luke and Leia to be outcasts. To be held back by the people that loved them.

His children had been freeborn. They would belong to no one but themselves. He would not – hinder them by denying them their birthright. To be denied the Force, to live a life where it didn't colour every moment, fill every breath with colour and life and light – they deserved more than that. He couldn't touch the Force, but he could teach them how to feel it. Teach them how to love it as he did. Teach them to avoid his mistakes.

"Tell them," he said finally, Padmé pale and small before him, dark curls fanned out around her like a halo, like the angel he'd once thought she was, "that if they ever want to see them, all they have to do is ask. I'll – I'll find a place for us. I'll leave the information with you."

"If that's what you want," Kess said, face revealing nothing. He clasped him on the shoulder gently, ignoring again the slight jump. "Once you have everything set up, come back here and ask for me. I'm not a big fish here, but I've got people who listen to me. Your family is safe in my hands. I promise."

"Thank you," Anakin whispered, reaching forward to grasp his wife's hand once more before he turned to leave. She didn't move, but for the rise and fall of her chest. He pressed a kiss to her cheek. A promise.

"I'll be back."

* * *

Thanks so much for reading! Please let me know what you thought.


	4. Chapter 4

iv.

"Master," he was saying, words familiar and dull in his mouth, the order not what they should be, the recollection imperfect though the sentiment burned even still in the back of his throat. "How would you feel if I...turned into a major disappointment?"

He remembered this.

Utapau. Not before the war, but before the end of it, before his master had been sent off to it alone, the sting of Ahsoka's decision to leave lingering in the back of his head, pecking away at the fragile balance he'd managed to achieve throughout the years of her apprenticeship. He remembered the planet's sharp edges and the hard, rocky ground they'd slept on with the fuzzy yet certain clarity that only existed in dreams.

It was fitting, he supposed hesitantly, thoughts somehow less clear than they should have been, the desolate landscape sprawling out, blurred, in front of him, boundaries and edges undefined and unimportant. Without the Force, his mind had only his memories to feed on. He would never receive a terrifying vision through the Force again.

Considering it was what had partially lead to his situation in the first place, he wondered if he should have been glad.

"How well would you sleep?" He continued, hearing the phantom crackle and hiss of the fire he'd made for them, uncertain as to why the sound now set his teeth on edge. "Knowing I'd failed you?"

" _Not very well, I imagine_ ," is what his master had said, before reassuring him with what was now an almost painful irony that it would never happen. He remembered that part of the conversation with aching clarity, the ease of his master's then certainty doing little to assuage the creeping doubt that even then had begun to settle into the dark places in his heart. Ahsoka hadn't failed him – not really, though in some ways her departure had still felt like a betrayal in all the ways that mattered. He hadn't blamed her for wanting to leave the Order. But that hadn't stopped him from feeling responsible for what had happened to her, for feeling as though there was something he could have, _should have_ , done. If only to keep her from leaving him, too.

But the tired, familiar sound of his master's voice, half-dulled by sleep, never came. Instead, the air was filled with the loud crackling of their campfire, smoke billowing into the sky, growing hot and oppressive. He turned, surprised, to face it – their campfire had been small, barely enough to keep warm, puttering out as they slept – and reeled back in horror as Utapau melted away, the ground growing hot, the air turning to ash in his mouth, tasting molten. The coolness of the sky dissolved into spreading clouds of red and black.

"I'm afraid I don't sleep very well at all," his master said, tone apologetic, lightsaber ignited at his side, iridescent blue against the liquid orange light that surrounded them. The ground shook under their feet. Anakin's breath caught in his throat, panic squeezing like a vice, and his master was advancing but he had nowhere to go, nowhere to run –

This wasn't how it had happened, he was sure, thoughts unsteady, panicked. His master would never have fought him like this.

"Please," he begged, falling backwards onto the uneven ground, lightsaber nowhere to be found, volcanic rock, lava burning underneath him, and this too felt _wrong_. He reached for the Force and found nothing but gaping, empty greyness. Void and useless. Burning flesh, the scent of heated, twisted metal filled his nose, the smoke billowing hot and metallic into his lungs. "Please," he croaked again, the air hot and thick and awful.

"I have no choice," his master said, eyes anguished, lightsaber swinging towards him, a flash of fatal blue, "and neither do you."

His eyes snapped open to absolute darkness. For a moment he couldn't breath at all, chest aching, fingers scrabbling desperately at the cold and grimy duracrete he was laying on, tears leaking out and dripping, cool and damp, down the sides of his face. Above him, safe in their crib, one of the twins began to cry and a thin trickle of air finally made it past his lips. The crib was practically the only piece of furniture in the entire flat, and though its design was simple, its elegance looked almost ridiculous against the dingy backdrop of the rest of the room. Bail Organa (he didn't know how and he didn't want to know, quite frankly) had smuggled it out of Padmé's nursery. The one he hadn't even known about, though in retrospect he supposed she'd intended it as a surprise.

He never had been any good at interior decorating.

"I'm sorry it's not more," Senator Organa had said, eyes shadowed, face guarded. How he had found out where Anakin lived was something else he had no desire to know. He had looked slightly ill. Though between the fall of the Republic and Padmé's condition, Anakin supposed he'd earned the right to look a little bit exhausted. In recent weeks, Anakin had only caught glimpses of him on passing holonet billboards. He was leading the talks with the Separatists. That he had somehow found the time both to illicitly smuggle an entire crib out from Padmé's apartment and bring it to Anakin and the twins, squirrelled away in Coruscant's unsavoury depths, was an act almost overwhelmingly kind.

"Don't ask how," he'd said, eyes twinkling just briefly before they faded once more to dullness. "Please just take it. I know we've never gotten very well acquainted, General," and he ignored Anakin's aborted protest, "but Padmé was – _is_ a dear friend of mine, and of Breha. It's the least we can do."

And that had been that. He wasn't in a position to decline it, and it was taking up a rather awkward amount of space in the flat complex's dingy hallway. He'd accepted it with stinging eyes, unfathomably grateful. He hadn't yet found a job, and the rapidly dwindling pile of credits he did have had to go towards their sour living accommodations and their food. He wasn't sure what he would have done, otherwise. To grow up without a real bed –

Well. He'd been there, done that, for at least some of his life, and from what he could remember it hadn't been particularly fun for him or for his mother.

But at least the twins would have a place to sleep. Until they grew, of course, but presumably he'd have some more funds by then. He had to at least hope that their situation would eventually improve.

He lay there, breathing raggedly for as long as he could stand it, knowing if he stood up only to fall it would only make things worse. Gritted his teeth when the ground stopped moving underneath him and hauled himself up with the bars on the crib, neck stiff. He'd slept on worse than cold duracrete before, sometimes without even the luxury of a wadded up cloak to cushion his head, but for some reason his body was having a hard time remembering that.

"It's alright, little one," he rasped into the darkness, hunched over the crib, waiting for his eyes to adjust. They were still getting to know each other, the three of them, but he thought the crying was coming from little Leia. It had been hard at first, but he could tell them apart a little easier now, was beginning to recognize the subtle differences in personality. Luke was calmer than his spitfire of a counterpart, more sensitive but easier to quiet. Leia was a bit more colicky, a little harder to settle down. A kindred spirit, he thought, smiling weakly as the dark became more manageable. Though hopefully more like her mother in all the ways that mattered.

They didn't like being separated from each other at all, but Luke was fast asleep, and he only had so many arms. He leaned down and picked her up gently, narrowly avoiding a tiny foot to the face, the distressed fussing dying down as he brought her closer into him. He held her gingerly, still not entirely certain what was correct, what was safe. Kess had shown him, had sent him home (though home, he thought bitterly, was probably a bit of an exaggeration when it came to describing the tiny, dripping, freezing flat he'd managed to find for them) with piles and piles of flimsi pamphlets on parenting, but he had yet to make his way through all of them. He would have said it was like flying blind, but he had done that before and found it far easier than – than _this_.

"It's alright," he said again, words catching in his throat. "I didn't mean to disturb you. You deserve – you deserve far better dreams than that." She didn't smell, and he'd learned early on that the cry that meant hungry was far louder and harder to dispel than the one that was simply distressed. His children were strong in the Force – even though he couldn't feel them, he was certain that they could feel him. His own mother hadn't been Force-sensitive either, but he could remember quite clearly the sensation of sometimes just _knowing_. Knowing how she felt, or what she had dreamed. When she had been terribly sad but didn't want him to know it.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, stroking the bridge of Leia's nose with his thumb, watching her eyes, big and dark, like her mother's, blink sleepily as a result. She breathed quietly, peacefully, against the pained stutter of his own heart. He wondered if the stunted, rasping hiss of his own breath was disconcerting.

Wondered again if he was making a huge mistake. Well. Another huge mistake. Technically speaking, he already had quite the list.

He settled himself awkwardly down on the floor, back against the crib, Leia cradled in his arms. Coruscant's night, loud and bright and dangerous this far down in the underworld, shining murkily through the reinforced window, seemed distant and remote.

Together, they waited for the dawn.

The three of them woke together at first light. Anakin fed the twins, burped them, changed them, one at a time, following the flimsi pamphlets' instructions painstakingly, terrified of doing something wrong, though by now the routine was at least a little bit familiar. By the time they were all ready for the day it was nearing mid-morning.

"Could use another hand," he muttered raspily on their way out the door, praying no one would think to break in while they were gone. It hadn't happened yet, but it really was not a very nice part of Coruscant. "Or at least another set of eyes. Maybe in the back of my head. What do you think, Luke?" He looked down at the baby strapped to his chest, who looked up at him placidly. He'd found that one baby in the back and one in the front was more secure, though it probably looked a bit ridiculous. With his old cloak wrapped around them all, from far away the silhouette was likely monstrous-looking, but it kept the twins safe from pollution and the elements, and it kept people from looking at him too closely.

He sighed. "Come on," he said, wrinkling his nose at the pungent smell of the flat complex's hallways. "We've got a lot of walking to do today."

"Okay, new rule," Kess said, voice firm, who had popped his head in to check on Padmé, taken one look at Anakin's nail beds and the pallor of his face and practically shoved him into a chair. Placed Leia gently in his arms and then wrestled a thin tube of oxygen under his nose. "I'm tired of looking at you pretending like you can actually breathe. You come to visit, you visit, but you do it in that chair with the oxygen on your face."

"This is unnecessary," Anakin protested, disliking already the dry feel of the air under his nose. He wasn't an _invalid_. "I don't – "

He paused. He could – think. Clearly. His vision was clearing too, though he hadn't noticed it ever blurring. His lips pressed together, irritated.

"You were saying?" Kess said. Luke's blue eyes stared at him from his position in Kess' arms. "Look," he continued, bouncing Luke gently with a kind of absent-minded skill that spoke of experience. Made a trickle of ill-deserved envy sour the back of Anakin's throat. "I get it, okay? You're used to being a big, intimidating war hero, you probably – eat rocks for breakfast and then do thousands of one-handed pushups, I don't know, I'm not a Jedi, but there's nothing wrong with needing a little – "

"Nurse Kess," Anakin interrupted, voice catching. "Where is the Separatist Council?"

Kess stared at him, mouth caught open mid-word. "I don't know what you mean."

"In all of the news reports, the treaty signings, the holophoto ops. Where is the Separatist Council? Wouldn't you expect them to be involved? They were right under the Chancellor's thumb the whole time. _Where are they_?"

"Well, I – " Kess paused, hesitating. "I don't know."

Anakin looked up pointedly, expression grim. Only the air hissing under his nose filled the sudden silence.

"Oh." Kess stilled. "You know what, now I don't even want to know. Gracious, you really finished the job, didn't you?"

"You could say that," he said darkly, adjusting Leia in his arms. She blinked up at him sleepily, dark eyes calm, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that she was being rocked to sleep by someone who apparently liked to dismember his enemies and throw them into lava beds. He couldn't remember doing it, exactly, but – well. He was struck by the tired and slightly horrifying thought that it was probably something he'd at least partially enjoyed at the time.

Kess seemed to catch on, brow crinkling.

"Even the worst kind of criminals receive the medical assistance they need," he said, cautiously. "It's not – dispensed according to who deserves it most, or who doesn't. That wouldn't be ethical." He moved to Padmé's bedside, laid Luke down in the crook of her arm where he settled, happily, legs kicking. His expression grew dry. "In the Republic, it is, however, dispensed according to who can afford it, unfortunately. Senator Amidala's insurance coverage extends to her children, of course." His dark eyes landed on Anakin. "But not to you. But," he said sharply, raising a finger to stop Anakin's protest before it could start, "as long as you're in this room, who's to say who exactly is using the oxygen?" He smiled, a bit grimly. "I'm notoriously terrible at filling out paperwork correctly. No one will say anything."

"Then I'm putting your job at risk," Anakin said, rising to settle Leia, finally mostly asleep, in the crook of her mother's other arm. There was no change, no twitch of Padmé's hand or blip in the monitors, the way he sometimes dreamed about, but the twins felt safe there. And it certainly couldn't hurt. If he ignored the tubes, the muted beeping of the machines, the paleness of her face, it almost looked like the three of them were merely taking a nap together. He adjusted a curl, brushed his thumb carefully cross her brow. He certainly didn't understand how the Republic's medical system worked, though if he thought hard about it he could remember Padmé sometimes talking about it frustratedly, eyes pinched, cheeks flushed. Back at the Temple, if you were sick or hurt, you went to the healers, no strings attached. He'd never stopped to wonder at how it worked for the rest of the galaxy. He swallowed. "I'm not worth the trouble, Nurse Kess."

A long pause.

"Maybe you're not," Kess said, fiddling with one of the instruments at the end of Padmé's bed. "If I believed everything they're saying about you on the Holonet, then definitely you're not." He looked up, eyebrow quirked. "But if you happened to ask me, I'd say you seem less like the deranged wildcard they're trying to make you out to be, and more like someone who's had the rug pulled out from under him and fallen into a lake of fire."

"More accurate than you might think," Anakin muttered under his breath, smothering a cough. "But – "

"No buts," Kess said. "My job here is to take care of Senator Amidala, and by extension, her children. How are her children supposed to do well if their father suffocates to death three standard feet away from equipment that could save his life?" His face was set stubbornly. He wasn't afraid of Anakin in the slightest – in fact, Anakin was starting to wonder if he was afraid of anything. The tiny spark of envy stabbed irrationally in the pit of his stomach again. "If you got some kind of insurance, I could use that same equipment to figure out what's wrong with you. I thought you Jedi didn't get sick, anyway."

"That's also unnecessary," Anakin said, looking to Padmé and the twins instead, away from the probing gaze. "I know what's wrong. I'm not sick, I just – "

He shifted, uncomfortably.

"I got a little – crispy," he said, the minute shudder he couldn't seem to prevent undermining the nonchalance of his tone. "The Jedi fixed it, mostly."

"C – " Kess stilled, again. "Crispy. You mean – "

The room was kept slightly cooler than he found comfortable, so the sudden heat he was feeling had to be imaginary. He ignored the flash of blue that momentarily filled his field of vision too.

"I don't want to talk about it," he said, harshly, words scraping the back of his throat. "What happened to me was well-deserved."

Kess only looked at him, troubled.

"If you say so," he said, though his eyes disagreed. "Will you three be back tomorrow?"

The change in topic was greatly appreciated, though Anakin wasn't about to admit it.

"If we can," he said. Hesitated. "I need to – find a job. I'm worried we won't be able to come here as often." He gazed down at Padmé and the twins, felt something twist in his chest. It wasn't fair. He felt pulled in too many directions. Like – how had Kess put it? Like the rug had been pulled out from underneath him. He wanted to be here, with Padmé. After everything, it was the least she deserved. The least the twins deserved, to be able to spend time with their mother. It was better for all of them. He knew it was.

But if he didn't try to get their life together, cobble something together that was as stable and safe as he could make it – he had a feeling the consequences would be far greater.

"The Jedi you mentioned last time, the visitor," he said, reluctantly removing the oxygen from around his face. "Will you tell me if they come again? Don't put yourself in danger, but," he stood, looking down at Padmé, unnaturally pale and still, "I need to know what's going on."

"Of course," Kess said, grasping his arm firmly. He didn't flinch. "Don't worry. The Senator couldn't be in safer hands."

"I'm counting on it," Anakin said, letting a brief smile flit across his face. It felt a bit – unnatural. The synthflesh on the right side pulled a bit and he had a thought to wonder if it looked as weird as it felt. He hadn't had much occasion to look in a mirror lately. He took the twins reluctantly from Padmé's arms, pressed his lips to her forehead, and strapped them to his chest.

"Thank you, Nurse," he said, clapping the shorter man on the arm in turn.

"Safe travels, Skywalker," Kess said as they left, a dark, solitary figure against the crisp blankness of the hospital walls. "Good luck!"

* * *

Oh my god, it feels like it's been forever since I updated this - my sincere apologies, life got very, very busy. Two things: one, some of the dialogue from Anakin's dream is taken right from the unrendered, unfinished Clone Wars story reel Crystal Crisis on Utapau, which I love dearly, and two, is the crib Bail Organa smuggled out of Padme's apartment actually his and Breha's that they gave to Padme on the dl because they can't have children and their bff was having the most unsubtle secret pregnancy the world has ever seen? The answer depends entirely on how sad you want to be.

also, just fyi, I know literally nothing (or at least not very much) about babies or privatized healthcare (except that I don't? want it? but figured that it would definitely be something Emperor Palpatine would be all for), so please excuse any major inaccuracies in those regards.

As always, thank you so much for reading, and please let me know what you thought! Happy New Year!

\- W

Cross-posted to ao3


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